Reform and the reconceptualisation of teacher education in Australia

Abstract

Teacher education as conventionally provided by universities has come under increasing political and public scrutiny. As a result, around the world, regulatory changes, together with other pressures, have generated a flurry of new initiatives, partnerships, and providers. Although their provenance has varied, reforms in teacher education are typically based on questions about who should be recruited into teaching, what should be its knowledge base, what should be the respective roles of research and professional experience, what conditions teachers should be prepared for, where teacher education should be based, and what partners should be involved in its leadership and delivery. In this chapter, I outline two recently conceptualised teacher education programs and interrogate how far they go in providing ‘solutions’ to key ‘problems’ identified in and with teacher education. I consider the extent to which it is possible to create forms of teacher education that are professionally defensible from a higher education perspective while responding to public and political concerns.